Saturday, February 5, 2011

So this has been circling in my mind for months, when apparently I bricked my desktop about 2 months ago. The reason of this bricking is in fact due to overclocking. This was my desktop(right out from my memory):

Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition (Deneb)

Stock was 3.0GHz

Stable OC was 3.4GHz with via unlocked multiplier with no change in anything else.

MSI KA790GX-M Motherboard

AMD 790GX Chipset

2 X 2 GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800

Stock was DDR2-800 4-4-4-12

Stable OC was DDR2-1066 5-5-5-18

Asus EAH4670 1GB

ATI HD4670 Graphics

FSP Group 450W Power Supply Unit

That was the last stable configuration because I was using the stock cooler. It was very stable: I've used it without any hiccups for a year or so before I bricked it while intending to overclock it higher. Reason was because that I bought a new cooler; and I read on the web that Deneb processors can easily reach a 4.0GHz OC on air. All the while I've however forgotten about the wattage of my PSU, and hence that lead to a catastrophic failure of the motherboard and PSU(maybe processor... I don't know yet).

I was only stress testing the system at 3.6GHz with a slightly OC-ed Southbridge and Hypertransport, and a little over-voltage . The temperatures actually hovered around 62 Degrees before the system suddenly suddenly blacked out(as if somebody pulled the plug)

So my motherboard actually came back from warranty(my mum insisted on sending it for warranty), I've yet have a chance to test anything yet(I don't have a PSU with enough 12V wattage to try to power on that 125W TDP Processor).

That happened, unfortunately, when my internship was about to start. So I went to buy a cheap(really cheap 50-60USD?) Intel Atom motherboard and have been using this system since.

When I build gnome shell on my old system it only took about 25 minutes to complete building. However, now it takes like 3.5 hours! =_=..

So I am kinda like all bent to buy a new computer. However I didn't have enough money for that, not until recently Gnome Foundation just paid me ._.

With the new Intel Sandy Bridge Processors released not long ago, there are emerging laptops with Sandy Bridge processors as well. I originally considered the new Alienware M11X; however I've just identified a better system at a cheaper price. Which is why I am making this post trying to ask for some feedback from you guys. This laptop is Acer Aspire AS 5750G-2634G64Mnkk. Specifications are as follows: